Francis Coppola’s breakthrough came with The Godfather (1972), an enormously successful adaptation of Mario Puzo’s novel of the same name. A big box-office hit, The Godfather was also praised by critics and was ranked third on the American Film Institute’s 1998 list of the top 100 American films of all time.
A violent, dramatic, mythic exploration of a Mafia family, The Godfather revolutionised the gangster film, but it is also the story of a family, notably of a father and his three sons. Marlon Brando won the Academy Award for best actor for his portrayal of Vito Corleone. John Cazale, James Caan, and Al Pacino played his sons and Robert Duvall his trusted confidante. Coppola was nominated for best director, and he and Puzo won the award for best adapted screenplay.
Financially secure to make a more personal film, Coppola wrote, directed, and produced The Conversation (1974), a meditation on the power of technology. starring Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert. The concept of having power, desiring control, and eventually succumbing to the illusion of control is skillfully handled by Coppola in The Conversation. We, the audience, are invited to follow and eavesdrop on Harry Caul, a surveillance specialist hired to film a discussion between two young individuals in Union Square. Caul succeeds in his attempt, but given the complexity of the undertaking, he is left with three partial recordings that he must merge into a single useable cassette, a process that involves a great deal of technical sound play if he is to collect critical information parts and pieces. One specific line he unearths convinces him that the two are in danger, and he rapidly understands that turning in the recordings is precisely what would put them in danger. What follows is a long and methodical unravelling of both the problem Caul is attempting to solve and Caul's psychological predicament.
Coppola followed up with his acclaimed sequel The Godfather: Part II (1974) and won that year’s Academy Award for best picture. Moving both forward in time through the 1950s and back to the early years of the 20th century, Godfather II framed the events in The Godfather with overlapping stories that focus on the immigrant struggle for survival in America that was at the root of the first film. Coppola won the award for best director and shared the best screenplay award with Puzo.
Francis Coppola is an ardent advocate of new audiovisual forms and technology. While he went on to direct such mainstream films as Peggy Sue Got Married [1986] and Gardens of Stone [1987], Coppola nevertheless proceeded to invest time and money in promoting video and, ultimately, in an entirely new, largely electronic means of production for storytelling. And he makes no bones about it—if he could revolutionize the film industry and all current means of popular entertainment and mass communication, he would do it.
Not only that, he sees such an opportunity as one that would thoroughly revamp society and the prevailing political structures, both of which he is eager to do. Yet, as grandiose as these aspirations are, Coppola is clearly not interested in power and influence for its own sake. As this interview with Ric Gentry shows, Coppola is nothing if not a humanitarian and an idealist.
RIC GENTRY: In your work, are you more interested in the form and the technology than in the content?
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA: I am. In particular, I’m interested in what kind of content the technology can produce. I’ve been trying to find a way to create new narrative patterns based on the times and the technology for a long time. It’s also very difficult for me to maintain an interest in the traditional stories of old that get recycled into things we see today.
The climate of our times is very tired. It’s not that we have fewer ideas so much as something in the culture that doesn’t allow itself new approaches. Technology is delivering new values that have yet to be tapped. We’ve got all this new stuff and people aren’t looking at the obvious, which is that something totally new in terms of stories can come about. Instead, we use the advances in technology to reproduce and reiterate what we’ve already seen, what’s been done in terms of form for cen- turies. I think it’s time we catch up with the tools that have been invented.
The truth is I am interested in a content that I cannot get at. I yearn to be able to move into a world where my ideas connect into a pattern that could be identified as a story. But I truly cannot get there. It’s equally difficult for me to recycle the old stories of the past as most movies do today.
RG: So in a way you’re saying that advances in technology are synonymous with new ways of seeing and thinking, and therefore our traditional stories, structurally at least, are sort of culturally redundant and, in every way—sociologically, psychologically, artistically—unvitalizing.
FFC: What I’m saying is that technology, if used in new ways, might break up the monopoly certain imagery, certain icons, have on our attention. I think we could see a less homogenized view of things, and we’ll have to if there’s going to be a shake-up in our current political thinking. There’s something in our politics as old, as dated, as those stories from ancient times that get endlessly recycled.
With a new technology comes a tidal wave of new givens, new ideas, new beliefs, and most important, a new group of rulers. I hate to use such an archaic word for it but that’s what they are—rulers. Whether they are the high priests of the powerful and entrenched world religion, or the lords who control the land and the agriculture, the merchant seamen, conquistadors, the captains of the Industrial Revolution, they are our rulers. They and their ideas move out when progress moves them out by changing the nature of where power comes from.
I am beginning to have the thought that my primal interest in technology is a temporary phase—a vehicle—not unlike the ships of ancient explorers taking us from the Old World to a new continent of content and story. At that time I fantasize of leaving the old ship and moving into still another area of art and thinking.
RG: I get the impression, and Faerie Tale Theatre seems to confirm this, that artificial situations, theatrical ones, are better suited to creative video than location work, which is better for a movie. So ultimately, video is less spontaneous.
FFC: In the case of movies, like Rumblefish [1983], you can do wonderful neat stuff. Those of us who were first attracted to movies always had those few shots that, when they came back from the lab, you were more anxious to see how they came out. It’s just that I reached a point, not long ago, where I was no longer interested in that. I was very much interested in the new medium that was going to be approaching as the years went by, a kind of electronic cinema. Not quite television, but some modern version of that—advanced video, or high resolution, whatever you want to call it. I got involved with “Rip Van Winkle” just so I could continue to learn, try out a few ideas, and do my best.
Also, the process is very enjoyable. It didn’t take very long—like a week of rehearsal and then you were shooting—and that meant the focus was more on acting and ideas than on this kind of slow molasses method of making some movies. Personally, I really enjoyed myself a lot. It was like doing a play in college. But I would love to do a fable that was very realistic and then one that was realistic and maybe live, without any cinema editing at all.
RG: Do you have any ideas of how to implement that?
FFC: No. I mean, if someone said to me, “Francis, how would you like to do The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial on TV and do it live?,” I would do it. Of course, I’d rather do something original from a book or some story. But I would take any opportunity. I would love to direct for even a few months. I can’t, but I’d like to do a soap opera. That’s my dream.
RG: Just because you could work quickly?
FFC: Just to learn about it, basically. They say that a person really has one idea or two in his lifetime. I am working up to mine, and I feel it has very much to do with television and live-style television and twenty-four-track recording style. It has to do with a type of television evolved because of advances not only in video, but in computer science and all sorts of systems and electronics.
RG: Maybe you could have a group, maybe Faerie Tale Theatre is a prototype of such an organization.
FFC: They just did the fairy tales, but they were able to turn out a full-blown dramatic production every six weeks using the resources of video, cinema, matting, and all the aids to production and then, of course, found a way to sell it, to get sponsorship. That’s a really exciting thing to be connected with.
RG: But what about this idea that you’re working toward? Do you think there’s an idea that is synonymous with the new technology that isn’t evident yet?
FFC: I don’t talk about the types of work I would do because it’s easier to talk about the technology. The idea is very hard to explain. I could probably explain it to you very well if we spent hours and hours and said, “OK, let’s start from the beginning.” But the truth, it’s still coming into focus for me.
Basically, what I’m really interested in is becoming a writer of original, full-length dramatic material for an audiovisual medium, whatever it is. I’d be very interested in being a writer who could sit down, as I’m doing here, to explore to the best of my ability whatever my ideas and fantasies are, and then to know that I have a way to do it and to actually produce it for a cost that is not prohibitive, that is not so much that they won’t let me do it. It’s like a writer who wanted to have the theatre company of his dreams...
It’s interesting. When I was fifteen, I wanted to be a playwright. I didn’t know if I could be a good playwright, but that just suited me to a tee. And I tried writing plays, and they were never any good. But finally, just being good at science, I was the guy who ran the light board for the shows at school, and that’s how I got to be in that crowd. And then, putting up the lights on the ladder, I would look down and watch them rehearsing and see the director and say, I could do as well as that. So I started directing, but I started directing sort of on the same level as starting on the light board.
But what I really wanted to be was a writer... But then one day I went to see a movie at four o’clock in the afternoon. It was Eisenstein’s Ten Days that Shook the World [1928]. I had never heard of him, but I was so overwhelmed by this film that I said, I want to be a movie director. So, I did. I became a movie director. But then, a few years ago, after Apocalypse, what I really wanted to do was a kind of super television. Television taken to its full potential to be able to interpret dramatic subjects. That’s why I want a studio and I want to make that studio an electronics studio, so that some day it would have a company of actors, and it would have a means to essentially be a glorified Faerie Tale Theatre. I tried to have that studio and maybe it got pretty much out of hand, it was so big. But even so, whether it’s big or small, now I know that I want to work in this new medium and learn about it.
RG: I get the impression most filmmakers have some kind of phobia about video, that there’s something they think they might lose in the transition. Maybe that’s because video is in some sort of incipient stage of development.
FFC: It is in a new phase of development. More importantly, people in their time are ruled much more by social conditions. It’s enough to turn people off that video is considered kind of second class and cinema is the big deal. Television has been regulated and it’s been said that we don’t have exciting original work done for television so much, that people shy away from it. But that shouldn’t give the medium itself a bad name. I almost wish we had a new name for television because it’s waiting for the new artists in the country—writers and actors and directors. It’s going to be their instrument....
RG: How does this lead up to your use of video for Apocalypse Now?
FFC: With Apocalypse Now, since we were in those very difficult jungle locations, we found that we were never able to view any of the work. Dealing with projection was very tough. So we started to transfer the rushes to video. The video was actually transferred in L.A., but we bought a couple of those very first Beta 1 machines. I had one in a little hut and I used to get these cassettes and plug them in and see it. After a while, I was lugging this Beta around. I even put it on a houseboat float- ing down the river so we were able to see material and make decisions for reshoot- ing and that kind of thing. Then a very interesting use developed when we got this job of making Godfather I [1972] and Godfather II [1974] into a special television feature for NBC. They were willing to pay a lot for it. I was in the Philippines, so the editor arrived with all the Godfather I and Godfather II on tape. It was funny because there were big typhoons and we were running around with this Beta machine in helicopters. Whenever we stopped we would use the Betamax to make decisions since we didn’t have editing capabilities. At one point, we landed in some bombed-out place in the helicopter. We couldn’t get any 110 [electrical current] because we didn’t have a transformer. So, a helicopter pilot went into the kitchen where there was a washer/dryer and literally ripped the transformer off the wall. We plugged it in and that’s how we made that NBC special.
RG: Do you think there will be the money and the channels, literally and figuratively, for the number of aspiring writers and video makers to get into and make an impact?
FFC: To predict how it’s going to be for artists in the future. . . . It’s not so much, “What could it be for the artists?” Because you have to go back and wonder about the history of the industry itself. It depends on who’s running it, but it seems that the new video is something like television after World War II. It’s something that really would connect with the writing talent, the design talent, the acting tal- ent of the country if only there was a way for the three to come together. Right now, television is controlled, if not by the networks then the big cable companies, and if not by them, then by the big video cassette companies. It’s a business like fast food. It’s not like a national cultural interest. So it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen.
RG: Getting back to your story concept, the one you’re working toward. Aren’t there any contemporary issues or stories that stimulate you enough to say, “This is a new story,” even if it’s told with traditional beginning, middle and end? For instance, the nuclear threat.
FFC: No. I’m so bored with all those kinds of political films. I don’t think it’s the way to change the world and I don’t think it’s the way to deal with the issues. I feel that it’s chipping away with a spoon at a wall so big. All the well-worn political issues that people choose to think they’re being relevant and constructive with do not interest me. It’s mainly that they announce themselves as political films. I like political work that sneaks up on you. I admire, to a small extent, those people. But I feel, in a way, that it isn’t revolutionary work at all. That’s like establishment revolutionary. We all know, at any given time that there are worthy causes related to either disarmament or peace. And then there’s establishment press and movie business—but it’s all entrenched, even the political areas. I’m interested in an area that is perhaps so radical that people don’t even see it as political yet.
RG: Have you always felt this way? Or has it evolved over the years?
FFC: I’ve always been really turned off by the current political issues of the day. I find that people who gravitate toward that are, for the most part, just another version of the people who are in the establishment. I find them inordinately interested in power, fame, and money. I feel that they just see that as an area that’s available and they go in there and rabble rouse. I don’t respect them for the most part.
– Francis Ford Coppola. Interviewed by Ric Gentry. In Gerald Duchovnay (ed): Film Voices
RIC GENTRY: In your work, are you more interested in the form and the technology than in the content?
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA: I am. In particular, I’m interested in what kind of content the technology can produce. I’ve been trying to find a way to create new narrative patterns based on the times and the technology for a long time. It’s also very difficult for me to maintain an interest in the traditional stories of old that get recycled into things we see today.
The climate of our times is very tired. It’s not that we have fewer ideas so much as something in the culture that doesn’t allow itself new approaches. Technology is delivering new values that have yet to be tapped. We’ve got all this new stuff and people aren’t looking at the obvious, which is that something totally new in terms of stories can come about. Instead, we use the advances in technology to reproduce and reiterate what we’ve already seen, what’s been done in terms of form for cen- turies. I think it’s time we catch up with the tools that have been invented.
The truth is I am interested in a content that I cannot get at. I yearn to be able to move into a world where my ideas connect into a pattern that could be identified as a story. But I truly cannot get there. It’s equally difficult for me to recycle the old stories of the past as most movies do today.
RG: So in a way you’re saying that advances in technology are synonymous with new ways of seeing and thinking, and therefore our traditional stories, structurally at least, are sort of culturally redundant and, in every way—sociologically, psychologically, artistically—unvitalizing.
FFC: What I’m saying is that technology, if used in new ways, might break up the monopoly certain imagery, certain icons, have on our attention. I think we could see a less homogenized view of things, and we’ll have to if there’s going to be a shake-up in our current political thinking. There’s something in our politics as old, as dated, as those stories from ancient times that get endlessly recycled.
With a new technology comes a tidal wave of new givens, new ideas, new beliefs, and most important, a new group of rulers. I hate to use such an archaic word for it but that’s what they are—rulers. Whether they are the high priests of the powerful and entrenched world religion, or the lords who control the land and the agriculture, the merchant seamen, conquistadors, the captains of the Industrial Revolution, they are our rulers. They and their ideas move out when progress moves them out by changing the nature of where power comes from.
I am beginning to have the thought that my primal interest in technology is a temporary phase—a vehicle—not unlike the ships of ancient explorers taking us from the Old World to a new continent of content and story. At that time I fantasize of leaving the old ship and moving into still another area of art and thinking.
RG: I get the impression, and Faerie Tale Theatre seems to confirm this, that artificial situations, theatrical ones, are better suited to creative video than location work, which is better for a movie. So ultimately, video is less spontaneous.
FFC: In the case of movies, like Rumblefish [1983], you can do wonderful neat stuff. Those of us who were first attracted to movies always had those few shots that, when they came back from the lab, you were more anxious to see how they came out. It’s just that I reached a point, not long ago, where I was no longer interested in that. I was very much interested in the new medium that was going to be approaching as the years went by, a kind of electronic cinema. Not quite television, but some modern version of that—advanced video, or high resolution, whatever you want to call it. I got involved with “Rip Van Winkle” just so I could continue to learn, try out a few ideas, and do my best.
Also, the process is very enjoyable. It didn’t take very long—like a week of rehearsal and then you were shooting—and that meant the focus was more on acting and ideas than on this kind of slow molasses method of making some movies. Personally, I really enjoyed myself a lot. It was like doing a play in college. But I would love to do a fable that was very realistic and then one that was realistic and maybe live, without any cinema editing at all.
RG: Do you have any ideas of how to implement that?
FFC: No. I mean, if someone said to me, “Francis, how would you like to do The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial on TV and do it live?,” I would do it. Of course, I’d rather do something original from a book or some story. But I would take any opportunity. I would love to direct for even a few months. I can’t, but I’d like to do a soap opera. That’s my dream.
RG: Just because you could work quickly?
FFC: Just to learn about it, basically. They say that a person really has one idea or two in his lifetime. I am working up to mine, and I feel it has very much to do with television and live-style television and twenty-four-track recording style. It has to do with a type of television evolved because of advances not only in video, but in computer science and all sorts of systems and electronics.
RG: Maybe you could have a group, maybe Faerie Tale Theatre is a prototype of such an organization.
FFC: They just did the fairy tales, but they were able to turn out a full-blown dramatic production every six weeks using the resources of video, cinema, matting, and all the aids to production and then, of course, found a way to sell it, to get sponsorship. That’s a really exciting thing to be connected with.
RG: But what about this idea that you’re working toward? Do you think there’s an idea that is synonymous with the new technology that isn’t evident yet?
FFC: I don’t talk about the types of work I would do because it’s easier to talk about the technology. The idea is very hard to explain. I could probably explain it to you very well if we spent hours and hours and said, “OK, let’s start from the beginning.” But the truth, it’s still coming into focus for me.
Basically, what I’m really interested in is becoming a writer of original, full-length dramatic material for an audiovisual medium, whatever it is. I’d be very interested in being a writer who could sit down, as I’m doing here, to explore to the best of my ability whatever my ideas and fantasies are, and then to know that I have a way to do it and to actually produce it for a cost that is not prohibitive, that is not so much that they won’t let me do it. It’s like a writer who wanted to have the theatre company of his dreams...
It’s interesting. When I was fifteen, I wanted to be a playwright. I didn’t know if I could be a good playwright, but that just suited me to a tee. And I tried writing plays, and they were never any good. But finally, just being good at science, I was the guy who ran the light board for the shows at school, and that’s how I got to be in that crowd. And then, putting up the lights on the ladder, I would look down and watch them rehearsing and see the director and say, I could do as well as that. So I started directing, but I started directing sort of on the same level as starting on the light board.
But what I really wanted to be was a writer... But then one day I went to see a movie at four o’clock in the afternoon. It was Eisenstein’s Ten Days that Shook the World [1928]. I had never heard of him, but I was so overwhelmed by this film that I said, I want to be a movie director. So, I did. I became a movie director. But then, a few years ago, after Apocalypse, what I really wanted to do was a kind of super television. Television taken to its full potential to be able to interpret dramatic subjects. That’s why I want a studio and I want to make that studio an electronics studio, so that some day it would have a company of actors, and it would have a means to essentially be a glorified Faerie Tale Theatre. I tried to have that studio and maybe it got pretty much out of hand, it was so big. But even so, whether it’s big or small, now I know that I want to work in this new medium and learn about it.
RG: I get the impression most filmmakers have some kind of phobia about video, that there’s something they think they might lose in the transition. Maybe that’s because video is in some sort of incipient stage of development.
FFC: It is in a new phase of development. More importantly, people in their time are ruled much more by social conditions. It’s enough to turn people off that video is considered kind of second class and cinema is the big deal. Television has been regulated and it’s been said that we don’t have exciting original work done for television so much, that people shy away from it. But that shouldn’t give the medium itself a bad name. I almost wish we had a new name for television because it’s waiting for the new artists in the country—writers and actors and directors. It’s going to be their instrument....
RG: How does this lead up to your use of video for Apocalypse Now?
FFC: With Apocalypse Now, since we were in those very difficult jungle locations, we found that we were never able to view any of the work. Dealing with projection was very tough. So we started to transfer the rushes to video. The video was actually transferred in L.A., but we bought a couple of those very first Beta 1 machines. I had one in a little hut and I used to get these cassettes and plug them in and see it. After a while, I was lugging this Beta around. I even put it on a houseboat float- ing down the river so we were able to see material and make decisions for reshoot- ing and that kind of thing. Then a very interesting use developed when we got this job of making Godfather I [1972] and Godfather II [1974] into a special television feature for NBC. They were willing to pay a lot for it. I was in the Philippines, so the editor arrived with all the Godfather I and Godfather II on tape. It was funny because there were big typhoons and we were running around with this Beta machine in helicopters. Whenever we stopped we would use the Betamax to make decisions since we didn’t have editing capabilities. At one point, we landed in some bombed-out place in the helicopter. We couldn’t get any 110 [electrical current] because we didn’t have a transformer. So, a helicopter pilot went into the kitchen where there was a washer/dryer and literally ripped the transformer off the wall. We plugged it in and that’s how we made that NBC special.
RG: Do you think there will be the money and the channels, literally and figuratively, for the number of aspiring writers and video makers to get into and make an impact?
FFC: To predict how it’s going to be for artists in the future. . . . It’s not so much, “What could it be for the artists?” Because you have to go back and wonder about the history of the industry itself. It depends on who’s running it, but it seems that the new video is something like television after World War II. It’s something that really would connect with the writing talent, the design talent, the acting tal- ent of the country if only there was a way for the three to come together. Right now, television is controlled, if not by the networks then the big cable companies, and if not by them, then by the big video cassette companies. It’s a business like fast food. It’s not like a national cultural interest. So it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen.
RG: Getting back to your story concept, the one you’re working toward. Aren’t there any contemporary issues or stories that stimulate you enough to say, “This is a new story,” even if it’s told with traditional beginning, middle and end? For instance, the nuclear threat.
FFC: No. I’m so bored with all those kinds of political films. I don’t think it’s the way to change the world and I don’t think it’s the way to deal with the issues. I feel that it’s chipping away with a spoon at a wall so big. All the well-worn political issues that people choose to think they’re being relevant and constructive with do not interest me. It’s mainly that they announce themselves as political films. I like political work that sneaks up on you. I admire, to a small extent, those people. But I feel, in a way, that it isn’t revolutionary work at all. That’s like establishment revolutionary. We all know, at any given time that there are worthy causes related to either disarmament or peace. And then there’s establishment press and movie business—but it’s all entrenched, even the political areas. I’m interested in an area that is perhaps so radical that people don’t even see it as political yet.
RG: Have you always felt this way? Or has it evolved over the years?
FFC: I’ve always been really turned off by the current political issues of the day. I find that people who gravitate toward that are, for the most part, just another version of the people who are in the establishment. I find them inordinately interested in power, fame, and money. I feel that they just see that as an area that’s available and they go in there and rabble rouse. I don’t respect them for the most part.
– Francis Ford Coppola. Interviewed by Ric Gentry. In Gerald Duchovnay (ed): Film Voices
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